With a total of 71 non-comics, this is my second-lowest year: only read fewer in 2006. Not that much lower than 2004 and 2005
though, each of which had 73.

HighlightsNon-fiction
The gonzo-journalism-from-Greece book
"Discordia"
was a good concept that I hope catches on: an e-book
somewhere between an essay and a book in both length and price.
"Dispirited" was an attack on the spiritual-but-not-religious
that unfortunately manages only the wrong half of the the trick:
intermediate in length, but the price of a full-sized book.
Stephen Pinker's
"The Better Angels of our Nature"
makes a fairly persuasive argument that things are getting better for
the human race over the long term. "Triumph of the City" does
the same for cities.
"When London Was Capital of America" and the Engels biography
"The Frock-Coated Communist" were interesting slices of history.

SF
"The Quantum Thief" was a great slice of modern science fiction with good ideas.
"Embassytown" was SF with a nice retro feel.
"On the Beach" deserves its reputation as a classic.

Non-SF fiction
"The Great Gatsby" also turned out to be surprisingly good for a classic.
"Pure" was a memorable, atmospheric novel about excavating a graveyard
in pre-revolutionary France.

Comics
Hardly read any comics, but "Habibi" was the definite highlight:
sexy, compelling and brilliantly composed, though its blatant orientalizing
will annoy some.

Well, that's about it for 2012. Hard to believe this marks ten years
since I started in 2002. Will we still be here in 2022?

Pretty snowed under at the moment though. Have the latest Iain Banks and Joe Abercrombie books sitting on my shelf. --It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

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